{"id":30421,"date":"2026-11-02T22:54:25","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T21:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=30421"},"modified":"2026-11-02T23:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T22:12:12","slug":"a-review-of-the-1974-classic-filmchinatown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=30421","title":{"rendered":"A review of the 1974 classic film&#8221;Chinatown&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles is located in a liminal stretch between the sea-water ocean and the bone-dry desert, so fresh water was always going to be an issue, and the beginning of the 20th century was the height of the so-called California water wars centred on Owens Valley. That conflict was the inspiration for this mystery film &#8211; effectively a\u00a0<em>film noir<\/em>\u00a0in colour &#8211; brilliantly directed by Roman Polanski, the last film he made in the United States before fleeing the country&#8217;s criminal justice system.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jack Nicholson is outstanding as the sardonic private investigator J. J. &#8220;Jake&#8221; Gittes, a man with a nose for trouble who is confronted with a palimsest of deceit and lies which he has to strip away layer by layer. There are excellent performances too from Faye Dunaway and John Huston as respectively a kind of&nbsp;<em>femme fatale<\/em>&nbsp;with her own secrets and her father who is the controlling force behind the mystery and murder. Look out for a cameo from the director.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The tightly-plotted and constantly witty script was crafted by Robert Towne and it is widely considered one of the greatest screenplays ever written. Gittes started his law enforcement career in the Chinatown district of the city where he found that&nbsp;<em>&#8220;You can&#8217;t always tell what&#8217;s going on&#8221;<\/em>&nbsp;and the film ends back in this corner of town where, distraught by what he has just witnessed, he is advised:&nbsp;<em>&#8220;Forget it, Jake. It&#8217;s Chinatown.&#8221;<\/em>&nbsp;Famously, the bleak ending is that of Polanski rather than Towne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both at the Academy Awards and at the BAFTAs, the picture received 11 nominations &#8211; a clear sign of the overall quality of the production &#8211; although it won very few. A sequel, &#8220;The Two Jakes&#8221;, was released in 1990 but had much less success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles is located in a liminal stretch between the sea-water ocean and the bone-dry desert, so fresh water was always going to be an issue, and the beginning of the 20th century was the height of the so-called California water wars centred on Owens Valley. That conflict was the inspiration [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30421"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30424,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30421\/revisions\/30424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}